faderift | OPEN: The Western Approach

OPEN: The Western Approach

WHO: Everyone!
WHAT: The Western Approach is a terrible place. You should definitely go there.
WHEN: Bloomingtide 15 onward
WHERE: The Western Approach
NOTES: This is open to everyone. Characters who would not happily go to the hell desert probably have to go anyway; it's a war, not a vacation.

Once these wastes were a land of plenty. Can you believe it? The rain came north over the Gamordan Peaks, turning the plains green and verdant for three months of the year. Eight hundred years ago, that changed. During the Second Blight, darkspawn spilled out of an enormous crack in the earth, corrupting it with their foul blood... and it never recovered, even after they were driven back underground. The Grey Wardens built Adamant Fortress to stand watch over that chasm, but eventually even they abandoned it to the wind and the biting sand.

What few of us eke out a living in this Maker-forsaken place do so knowing that any number of deaths await us: darkspawn raids, dragons, bandits—not to mention starvation from the lack of water and game. If we stay, it is because we know there are treasures buried in the bones of this place, ruins from the time when Tevinter ruled, and even earlier. We pass tales around our campfires of the things we have seen shrouded in the dust storms. My favorites are the ones about relics that could restore the Western Approach once more... but I don't believe them. Truth be told, on nights when the wind is calm, I can stand on a hilltop and see for miles in the moonlight over a stark beauty of which no other Orlesian can claim to know the equal. On those nights, I hope it will never change.

—From Lands of the Abyss by Magistrate Gilles de Sancriste

I. THE DESERT

When Scout Harding calls somewhere the worst place in Thedas, that's probably a bad sign. Even when nothing in the Western Approach is deliberately trying to kill you, there's nothing kind or forgiving about the landscape: bare and arid, carved through by sharp-dropped canyons, dotted with abandoned mines and signs of the deaths of lost travelers. Winds sweeping through to whip stinging sand into uncovered faces, and periodic dust storms obscure visibility entirely. It's warm enough to be dangerous but not so hot, at this time of year, that heat exhaustion and dehydration can't creep up on you while you aren't paying attention.

And at any given moment, something probably is deliberately trying to kill you. The food chain in the region is top-heavy, with quillbacks, phoenixes, hyenas, and varghests roaming hungrily and as likely to attack one another as the sparse local prey population. Compared to their natural competitors, the Inquisition's forces look like easy marks. The camps the Inquisition scatters at lookout points throughout the region require constant watch, and going anywhere alone is inadvisable. Not only because of the hostile local everything, but also because it is incredibly easy to get lost. One rock formation looks much like another after hours in the sun or bathed in shifting moonlit shadows, and good luck finding many other landmarks. There are a few: chunks of pillars or arches from some ruined structure, or the occasional odd pillar that might, if someone investigates, prove to mark a trail of sorts.

Plus: the only people who seem determined to survive out here are cutthroat bandits and stray Venatori. Double-plus: a high dragon makes occasional fly-bys, scouring the ground below for anything edible, armored or not.

Some reprieve comes at night, relief from both the sun and the area's primarily diurnal predators. But that's when the darkspawn come out.

II. GRIFFON WING KEEP

Bloomingtide 16-17: Taking the Keep

Only a small force of Tevinter cultists remains in Griffon Wing Keep when the Inquisition arrives, seemingly on their way out the door already, but the sight of Inquisition banners is enough to make them stay and fight. There's no need for siege equipment, but there is call for a little bit of patience. With it, a small battalion is able to evade the mages and archers on the walls and storm the doors with few casualties. Fewer than three dozen warriors wait inside. It's a quick, brutal fight; it only takes a night.

Bloomingtide 18 Onward: Home Away From Home

Once the Keep is cleared of occupants, it's ripe for the Inquisition to… occupy… But with implicit permission, at least. Those who aren't needed for fights elsewhere may be put to work clearing out debris and small animals and the remnants left by the cultists, and within a few days the fortress is a serviceable outpost, much more hospitable than the camps out in the sand. Barracks mean even those who don't have beds at Skyhold may have one here, and it takes less than a week for an enterprising merchant to arrive with ale.

III. THE STILL RUINS

Despite signs of recent activity, the lavish Tevinter palace tucked incongruously into the canyons is quiet and still, when the Inquisition discovers it—quiet, still, but not empty. The ancient ruin is brimming with demons and Tevinters in incredibly outdated fashions, all frozen in place, as they have been for hundreds of years. No one breathes or blinks, but their skin is still warm and alive to the touch.

Beyond the entryway and halls and through the courtyard, there are signs of research and experimentation, and one man stood unmoving with his hand clasped around something unseen.

Perhaps someone will discover the cause. Perhaps someone will undo the spell that's been cast over the palace. Perhaps, if someone does, someone will take the opportunity to not immediately murder all of these valuable sources of ancient information, and instead only murder most of them. In the meantime, however, it is unlikely that anyone will ever be able to get this close to a rage demon without receiving a face full of fire. Take advantage.

IV. CORACAVUS

Signs of the Venatori point upward: up the hills, up ladders and towers, and into the ancient Tevinter prison, Coracavus, that was built into the mountainside. The ruin is filled with sand now, with half-collapsed walls and anything not made of stone worn away by winds, and the Venatori are long gone, their hunt for relics from the glory days of the Imperium abandoned when an excavation attempt opened the prison to darkspawn, instead. The darkspawn have retreated as well, but there are signs of their presence. Namely the smell and the half-eaten corpses of slaves—primarily elven and dwarven—who were left behind to their fates when the Tevinters fled.

There's no sign of them now, but digging through their abandoned camps may turn up a name, if anyone would like to see that he pays.

V. ADAMANT FORTRESS

A day's determined walk from the nearest Inquisition camp, Adamant Fortress overlooks the vast chasm—dubbed the Abyssal Rift—from which darkspawn poured during the Second Blight. It stood abandoned for nearly 150 years before the Grey Wardens' recent reoccupation, and it's abandoned again now, emptied out well before the Inquisition's forces arrive. There are signs that the retreat was a hasty one: scattered belongings, opened doors, abandoned meals, and no fewer than fifty bodies left on a mass pyre that only half-burned without anyone to tend it.

The Veil has always been thin here, and it's thinner now, where demons have been pulled through from the Fade. Rifts hang over the battlements and in the corridors, and escaped shades lurk in the dark corridors, siphoning away the willpower of those who linger until they come close enough to attack. Those who visit the Fortress set up camp outside of it rather than within it, wisely.

There are clear signs of blood sacrifice, for those who look: the bodies, blood stains on the stone floors, neat lists of names systemically crossed through. Sorting through documents left behind may turn up vague notes in a mage's runic shorthand or the journal of a trepidatious new recruit (Lourde, a pickpocket, crossed through on the registers). Behind a locked door in the lowest rooms are the bodies of sixteen mages, still in their Circle robes, left lying where they fell when the Joining took them. Mages who were among the rebels in Redcliffe may recognize a face or two as belonging to the hardliners who left with the Tevinters.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hermione wasn't used to being sidelined, either. She wasn't a physical fighter, and she detested magical dueling as a sport, but she'd been forced to use her magic to protect herself and others quite a bit over the years. The fact that using her magic could actually worsen a situation for everyone in her vicinity hadn't sat well with her. After all, this might not be the first fight she'd ever witnessed in Thedas, but it had certainly been the largest and involved the most wounded.

Feeling guilty was stupid, and she knew it, but that didn't help wash away her concerns. But seeing Kirk reminded her that she could still help, albeit in smaller ways. So she closed the distance between them, cradling the little vial of blue fire in her hands as she held it out to him. Even if the spout wasn't ideal for sharing, a good amount of heat still emanated from the bottle, and the least she could do was share that with him.

"Unless you or someone on your crew is a rather sensitive Legili-... telepath, I don't know that it works that way." As for his question, she could only shrug and look around. "I might have been in Thedas a few months, but this is my first time attempting to spend a night in a place taken by sheer force. I have no love for the people that were here before us, but that doesn't make it much easier to sleep here."

He welcome the heat, holding out his hands to it to try and warm his fingers. He was not quite at the point of frozen, but they had begun to ache a touch, and the heat was a welcome distraction from the bite of the desert night.

"Spock has a kind of telepathy, but sadly, I know it's not quite so strong as to pick me out from so many stars," he shook his head. He knew it, but still it wasn't so bad to wish. If only his comm worked, he could at least try and send out small distress signals. Even if it wasn't his own ship, it might be enough to attract the attention of someone else. Though, there was the chance that could go horribly wrong...

"I understand," he murmured softly, looking at as he slowly wrung his hands to keep the fingers warm and nimble. "I'm not much of a fan of fighting - not like this anyways." He loved a good spar, or even a good bar fight. But this... this had been blood and mud and slaughter. He was sure the commanders had their justifications for doing as they did, but he just couldn't see it. Why did it have to come to a fight?

"You didn't get hurt did you?" he asked, looking her up and down critically, concern in those blue eyes and the hard line of his lips.

Given that Hermione's hands were wrapped around the small vial, she had no trouble offering Kirk the brunt of the heat emanating from the small spout. Since he was a rifter, he was also one of the few people she felt comfortable enough to get that close to for an extended amount of time, outside of battle. It might be unfair that she was more comfortable with a fellow rifter, but at least she knew that, whatever he thought of her magic, he didn't think that she was just another demon that had been spat out of a rift.

"If Spock found you, that would imply that we were in the same universe. I don't know if we can fairly make that sort of assumption." Magic was different, and magic was little more than a basic form of energy that could be manipulated by witches and wizards. The existence of the Fade threw a rather large monkey wrench in any supposition that they were quite that close to home.

Shaking her head, Hermione told him, "My magic isn't nearly good enough yet to put me on the front lines of any fight, not unless there's a rift that needs closing. I mostly hung back, far enough away that I wouldn't get in the way. Nothing's worse than someone trying to help and just fouling things up, after all."

Meeting his eyes, it was Hermione's turn to show concern as she asked, "What about you? I know this isn't exactly your usual sort of environment."

"Just because we might be in a different one doesn't mean Spock doesn't exist," he pointed out reasonably, though there was no evidence they were in a different one either. "For all we know, there are other uses out in the universe too." That was not impossible either, though it was a touch headache inducing. Either way, he didn't think he would ever figure out the full and proper answer, not any time soon anyways.

"No, but I've been in battle before. Not quite like this admittedly, but I have. I stayed back like you mostly, but I knocked a few out who got past the main throng." Knocked out, not cut down. He didn't care that they had to retake this place, he refused to kill those people - they didn't need to die for having defended the keep. "I was helping with first aid after that. I'm not a doctor, but I know enough of basic setting and first aid to help those not to badly injured and let the healers focus on those who really needed it."

He leaned back against the wall.

"And, well, now I'm out here, because I don't think sleep is an option tonight." His eyes softened and he motioned for her to have a seat with him against the wall. "Ever seen a sunrise in the desert?"

"Either way, the universe is too vast to know one way or the other," she replied with a smile and a bit of a shrug. Hermione definitely didn't know enough about the workings of the universe or the idea of there being parallel dimensions, and she was smart enough to know that you didn't keep talking about a topic if you didn't know a lot about it.

She noticed that Kirk specified that he'd knocked people out rather than outright killed them, and her approval of him went up significantly. She understood that Thedas was a much more cutthroat world than the one she'd come from, but she couldn't help wondering how many of the people who were routinely killed in battle actually knew what they were dying for, or if they'd even been informed of the possibility of their demise when they'd agreed to their job or post.

While she was growing to like Kirk the more she spoke to him, she was still somewhat surprised by the offer to sit with him and watch the sunrise. "Considering that I've never been in a desert before, no." Smiling softly, she moved to lean back against the wall, slowly lowering herself down to sit on the ground. "But if that's an invitation, I don't mind taking you up on it, since neither of us are likely to sleep anytime soon."

It was fun to debate. Kirk had his evidence that the multi-verse was a real thing. That evidence was living on the new colony of Vulcan, actually. But there was no way of knowing what was out there, and for the briefest of moments he wondered if that was how his ancestors had felt, looking up at the stars, wondering if they were truly alone on their little blue planet.

Kirk could kill, if he had to. But he tried his best to make it a last option, only done because there was no other way to save either his own life or that of those he was trying to protect. It was not something to be done lightly, hence his liking for the staff. He could kill if he had to - he had the strength now to crack a skull or two with the weapon - but it was easier to keep to debilitating attacks rather than killing.

"I saw sunrise on the planet Vulcan, once," he told her quietly when she had sat. "It is - was - a very hot hot planet. Desert like, actually, and greater gravity than Earth. Humans have to be very careful when they're there not to overheat or exhaust themselves. Anyways I was up late one night and just kept tossing and turning and all of a sudden... light." He closed his eyes as if remembering it for a second. "I felt jealous of the Vulcans that day, that they got to see that color orange-red every morning."

Astronomy was one of the core courses at Hogwarts, and so Hermione was familiar enough with the planets and stars and the galaxy in general. Parallel universes, though? That wasn't simply astronomy, and since she had no evidence to support it as of yet, it would require something of a leap of faith.

Hermione couldn't kill. She knew that without a doubt. If she ever did, it would have been a matter of accidentally using excessive force while trying to defend herself or someone else. She'd never been able to bring herself to so much as make an attempt at an Unforgivable Curse when she had full access to her magic, and so the people of Thedas had nothing to worry about from Hermione. Well... nothing permanent, at any rate.

Leaning back against the wall, Hermione looked at Kirk as he spoke, able to tell that there was something-... not quite sentimental, but surely thoughtful in what he was saying. "How did that sunrise differ from the ones on Earth? I've seen a few fairly vibrant ones from home."

Nor from Kirk. He was not of the mind to start fights for no reason - at least, ones of import. So he liked a good tussle in the bar now and then. But when it came to important matters - words before lasers. Or swords, in this case. But the world was a cruel place, even in his own universe, and sometimes... sometimes those were the hard decisions commanders had to make.

"The color is different," he said. "They have different minerals in their earth, and slightly different gases in the atmosphere. It's breathable to humans, but there are slight differences in density that refract the light differently than Earth's. It's not a color that would be found naturally on Earth."

That was why Hermione chose to work behind-the-scenes whenever there was fighting involved. She couldn't avoid it all the time (though she was hoping that would change now that the war back home was over), but she did her best not to actually have to devolve to violence at the slightest clash.

"It's... it's its own color?" Hermione asked, looking appropriately awe-struck by that concept. "Really? That sounds amazing." Looking up towards the horizon, she smiled softly as she murmured, "I wonder what the sunrises here look like. I've never really watched them."

He nodded. "You know color comes from light refracting, right?" he asked her. "Different planets have different gases in their atmospheres and in different density amounts, so light can be refracted differently. Many worlds share similar colors, but there are some unique ones to certain worlds because of those gases. If you brought a leaf from such a world to Earth, the color would alter slightly because of the way the light is refracted."

It made him feel privileged to be able to travel the universe, to see sights like that that he would be denied if he had remained on Earth.

"I've seen a few back at Skyhold," he admitted. Clearly this was not the first time he found himself restless. "I'm sure it's beautiful though. I've always liked sunrises more than sunsets too."

"I... never really thought of that," she murmured. "I understand the science behind all of it, but I didn't think that it would have an effect on something as simple as a sunrise or even color perception. It's fascinating!" And unlike some people, she seemed to genuinely think so, even if they were talking about refraction.

"Me too. Sunsets can be very pretty, but there's a refreshing feeling that comes with sunrises. A new day beginning, a fresh start, one day closer to your goals. I'd rather think of new beginnings than the close of a day." With a small smirk, she glanced back at Kirk and admitted, "I have to say, though, I took you for someone who preferred sleeping in, so I wouldn't have pegged you for the sunrise sort."

He laughed softly, though it was not insulting - just amused. He liked imparting new information, especially when someone could appreciate it. "Sometimes the changes are so subtle you can't actually perceive them. Some alien species can distinguish them easier because they're more sensitive to light and have more receptors within their eyes. Others are incredibly drastic, especially on planets where humans cannot breathe without artificial help."

Blue eyes looked back to her, sparkling in amusement.

"I grew up on a farm. No sleeping in there, even in the future," he chuckled. "And Star Fleet has shifts. No being late for those - though to be honest we don't really have 'night' and 'day' on the ship, just Red and Blue shifts. That, and I like having something to do. I'm not very good at just laying around, actually."

"You must have seen a lot," she murmured admiringly. "I can't imagine what it would be like to be friends with an alien. Although... well, I suppose we're all aliens to someone. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who wonder over the existence of elves and dwarfs." Chuckling softly, she added, "And technically Thedas is a completely different planet from where we'd all started off, so I guess that would make the Dalish and the Qunari the equivalent of aliens to rifters, and they would view us the same way."

The more she discovered about his past, the more amusing Hermione found it. "You're a farm boy? Really? That's... not what I would have expected from a space explorer. It's actually sort of sweet." Leaning back against the wall to look out at the horizon, she expressed, "I'm sure the Inquisition is glad to have someone around who's so willing to be put to work."

"It's not any different than being friends with another human," he shrugged. "There are cultural differences, but when you're friends, you just learn to fit within each other's spheres. And you're right - everyone on this planet would be considered a new alien contact, even the humans. They've developed their own unique culture here. Even if they share DNA with Earth humans, the Federation would still classify them as alien." Sharing a common stock did not camaraderie make.

He shrugged. "Well, not by choice. It was my uncle's farm. I got left there when my mother went out with the Fleet with my stepfather. I didn't hate it, though. I mean, I didn't exactly like my uncle, but the farm was okay." He paused, looking upwards. "My favorite memory is always the ones I have looking up at the night sky. There was low light pollution, so there were always a ton of stars on clear nights." Ah, but that was getting a bit off track.

"From what I've seen, you're no slouch yourself. You're a brave girl trying to organize that library."

"Like when people who grew up in wizarding families become friends with people who grew up with Muggles," she noted with a soft smile. "You just learn to accept the differences, or to laugh them off. Depending on the parameters of your friendship, that is." Pausing for a moment, Hermione looked at Kirk curiously and asked, "Does that mean you view this purely as another planet and not some other reality or realm or whatever the prevalent theory is? How would you account for the demons, in that case? Aggressive aliens?"

Her smile grew as she followed Kirk's gaze up towards the heavens. "I'd only ever really looked skywards when I was studying for an astronomy test," she admits. "The sky has always been very beautiful, but... I'd just always had other things on my mind."

She'd been called brave before, but not for traversing a library. So that helped to turn her wistful smile into a small smirk as she replied, "And some would say you're brave for actually engaging me in conversation, especially in a library. I do have a proclivity for asking more than my fair share of questions."

"For the most part, yes, that's been my running theory," he nodded. "It's another planet, possibly also in another universe, but it could be in another section of space. It's hard to tell with so little information to go on. As for the demons? Also entirely possibly that they are in fact aliens too. Why the aggression though, I can't say, but it wouldn't be the first time I've come into contact with alien species that want to conquer and not cooperate. Earth, in its early life in space, had to fight one of those species."

It was only a theory, and he had no proof of course. But he liked to think he was not far off. It gave him hope, and put things into a perspective he could understand and accept.

"Questions aren't bad. It's a good thing to be curious," he chuckled. "And to be fair, you answered plenty of mine. It was a fair exchange, I thought."

"That sounds... very logical," Hermione brought up, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. There was logic in magic, certainly, once you got over the initial impression that it was all about blindly waving wands. But at the same time, there was a certain suspension of disbelief in it, and Hermione knew better than most just how difficult it was to suspend disbelief when one was being overly logical. "Is it that you still haven't entertained the thought of magic being real, or are you just convinced that magic is a kind of science, under a different name?"

At the very least, she was far from judgmental about it, even if he was claiming she was little more than a scientific anomaly than an actual witch. She was just curious as to where his opinions were by this point in time.

Chuckling softly back at him, Hermione remarked, "That depends entirely on to whom you're speaking. Some people would just rather accept the world at face value, or be fed all the information readily available to them in books or by teachers. The latter isn't terrible, but if you don't learn to ask questions, you'll never know just how wrong books and teachers could be. That's the case with most of the books in Skyhold's library. It's one thing to have a bias, but when almost every single book has such a marked bias that it gets in the way of the facts... well, Thedas could have done with asking more questions long ago."

"Should it not be?" he inquired of her, glancing her way with a curious tilt of his head. Her question made him recall their first conversation those few months ago and he let out a soft breath. "I... cannot deny that you and the people here can perform feats I would have once thought impossible. Magic for the time being is as good a word as any for it - to me at least. I can't deny what is being performed in front of me, even if I cannot quite explain it."

Magic was still a hard word for him to accept, but he couldn't deny the abilities of the people here either. They called it magic, and at this point - well, it was more of a hassle to fight it than not. So magic it was, and for the time being he would simply have to rely on the fact he had seen it in action.

"Any suggestions on some new reading topics? I want to get a better hand on the principle politics of this world - from both sides," he added. "Between both sides, well, we should find something like the truth." As it was, he let out another shrug. "It's a young world. Earth's history - my Earth anyways - spent a long time not asking the questions you're talking about. It took two more devastating wars before we finally figured out the answers to those questions too. Right now it seems Thedas is seeking answers, but answers don't always come easy."

It was a sad thing, but a truthful one. It made him sad, honestly. War was such a pointless thing, and yet it seemed to be everywhere in some form in the universe.

"It's easy enough to explain, if you just look at it from the right angle," Hermione mentioned, the corner of her lips tilting up a little. "Magic is just energy, and there are different ways of focusing it. The only thing that seems to be a mystery - both in Thedas and where I'm from - is just why one particular person can use that energy and another person cannot. It seems to be more genetic at home, but even if a witch and wizard have a child, it doesn't necessarily guarantee that child will have magic. It's just the usual case. Maybe if witches and wizards actually studied genetics, they'd be able to understand it a little better."

But the idea of anyone in a set of wizard's robes actually using modern laboratory equipment is laughable, and since most Muggles don't know about magic, it isn't likely than any explanation is going to present itself anytime soon.

"You won't find both sides, and that's part of the issue," Hermione explained. "Most of the books were either written by members of the Chantry or by people who support it. Many of them paint a poor picture of elves and the Qun, with little mention of dwarves. I'd recommend going out and actually talking to these individuals if you'd like to know more about their history. The Dalish elves, for instance, are good sources for historical facts about their people, but many of them don't trust humans. Many of them don't even trust other elves, so they could be a bit tetchy. Most of the ones I've spoken to, though, have been friendly enough. The same goes for the Qunari and the Vashoth and Tal-Vashoth, though I've only met three or four of them, and I think they'd all been Vashoth rather than Qunari. It's a sensitive topic for many of them, though, so I tend not to bring it up."

She pauses after a moment and asks, "The two wars you mentioned from your world... are they World Wars I and II? Or had something worse happened in your Earth's history?" He is, after all, technically from her future, so she's not entirely sure just how much worse off the world could have gotten, if it was in fact the same one.

"I remember you explaining it that way," he acknowledged. "And I understand that's part of it, but I think there's more to it. How do you draw the energy? How are you able to manipulate it? Is it some part of the brain or do you have some other organ different from other humans? Do the people here have special organs for it, or special nerve receptors? And why, as you say, can some use it and others not? Is it genetics, or mutation?" he listed off. It could be a host of things, but without proper instruments there was simply no telling. And he did want to understand - not out of fear, but his own innate curiosity.

He pursed his lips at her assessment, not because he didn't trust it - but because he did. It was disappointing to here, but not entirely unsurprising either. Texts from the era much like this one back home were not much better, so often viewed through religious and political lenses without the writer being properly removed from the events.

"I'm friends with Korrin, but I think some of those subjects are hard for her, so that might be something she will have to expand on in her own time, if she ever wants to," he shrugged. "As for the Dalish- I'm still learning out to differentiate between the different sects of elves and all the rest." He was trying, but it was a lot to take in and learn. A learning curve was to be expected.

There is a moment where he pauses and considers. It could be a bad thing to reveal to much of the future, but she was one girl and likely the wars he knew of would happen after her death - or not at all. Her world already sounded so different from his, it was entirely possible that the events leading up to them simply wouldn't come to pass. Or they might, but for different reasons.

"World Wars I and II happened," he nodded. "And then came the Eugenics War, and then World War III."

Hermione could only look at him for a moment, a touch of a thoughtful frown on her face. "How do you draw breath?" she asked. "How does a swimmer learn to hold his breath for long periods of time while underwater? Why do other people have difficulty breathing just climbing a set of stairs?" Shrugging, she adds, "I'm just as human as you are, and I'm fairly certain we have the same physiology. But there are some things that are instinct for me that you would have to practice at, or that you won't be able to accomplish at all. And vice versa. Calling it a mutation rather than chance genetics discounts the nuances between individuals, doesn't it?"

Despite the more serious subject matter, her face does light up when he mentions Korrin. "Oh! I'm friends with her, too! She was one of the first people I'd met here. Though, well, I think one of the very first was The Iron Bull, who's very... broad, and there was a younger one I talked to once. Kas, I think his name was? They're a very interesting people, even if they don't always see eye-to-eye. As for the elves, as near as I've been able to figure it, there are the Dalish, which are separated into different traditional tribes, and the city elves, who grew up in human cities in alienages. But some of those elves are also mages, and from what I understand, some have even chosen to follow the Qun. So there's some diversity involved." And she could probably cite even more examples of diversity, if she'd actually been raised here. Or maybe not, if mages had really been as stifled as she'd heard.

Excited as she might have gotten over talking about the various cultures in Thedas, hearing about just how bad Kirk's world had gotten brings that frown back, along with no small sense of horror. "Eugenics War?" she asked, voice low. "Is that... is that what it sounds like?" Because in its own way, depending on what had been the inciting factors, it sounds worse than World War III.

"And that may very well be it. But I'm the sort who likes knowing," he shrugged his shoulders, not able to deny a central part of himself. "I find it interesting and fascinating and amazing. It could be just a matter of sensitivity - like some people being better at drawing versus the rest of the population. It could be something else entirely. I don't find anything wrong with wanting to understand it." It was a curious thing, like trying to understand how certain species had evolved certain aspects of their physiology and why. It was simply innate curiosity, not anything sinister, though even he knew sometimes you simply had to accept the answer of - it is what it is.

Her enthusiasm for the other cultures is warming and he smiles at it, though it disappears when she asks about the wars he had named. Of course she would, and for a brief moment he almost regretted mentioning them. But considering the massive differences between their worlds, he chose to believe they wouldn't come to pass at all.

"Back in the 1990s, some scientists decided they wanted to try and make humanity better." His lip curled a bit at that sentence, clearly finding the notion distasteful. "They were trying to breed a better human through genetic engineering and selective breeding. They succeeded in creating people that were stronger than a natural human called Augments - but when you create weapons and give them free will, things can go very wrong. Millions lost their lives in the war, but humanity 'won' in the end." There was a pause, looking down at his own hands as if they might hold some answer, or hide some grim truth. "Its ramifications reached into my era, even."

Edited 2016-06-11 05:28 (UTC)

Hermione couldn't help cracking a small smile when Kirk declared that he was simply the sort of person who liked knowing things. She still hated the fact that she didn't have all the answers here, but at least she wasn't the only one in the dark, and at least Kirk was good company with whom to stumble around until she could find something resembling illumination. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to understand it," Hermione told him softly. "It might be frustrating when that comprehension just doesn't come, but at least you're not simply accepting things as they are without looking into it at least a little."

She could tell by the look on his face that unfortunately, this Eugenics War likely was exactly what it sounded like. The fact that it began at just around her current timeline made her stiffen a little, though she had to force herself to remember that this could be an entirely different Earth from the one she knew.

"I... don't think my technology has reached quite that far yet," she offered, though she knew it wasn't much comfort. "We're just barely managing to get computers into more homes, though I wouldn't be able to say just where we are insofar as genetics. It's one of the drawbacks of being raised in the wizarding world for most of my adolescence, since we don't use electronics there. Mostly." After a brief pause, she shifted a little close to Kirk, not quite reaching out for him so much as making her presence known. "I'm sorry that sort of thing happened, and I hope it's one of those things that sounds much worse than it is. Or, at least, that you've managed to deal with the worst of it."

"Then maybe you won't go through it, and I hope you don't. The Eugenics War was a direct lead in to World War III, and after that humanity finally got itself together. I guess some twenty-seven years of war and some six hundred million people was more than anyone wanted to repeat - and that was just World War III."

That, and not long after the end they achieved warp, they went out into the universe and discovered they truly weren't alone. That their little blue planet, so perfectly placed, had sisters out there, and the universe was wider and more diverse and beautiful than they had ever imagined. Suddenly, the problems on their own planet seemed so very small and insignificant.

"It could have been very bad. It's bad enough that people died for it, but considering what could have happened? It's a heavy price, but a small one." There was genuine regret and heartache in his voice - Pike, the people at that lab, his crew, the few people on Marcus' ship, even Khan's people. They had been innocent in this confrontation at least.

"... twenty-seven years?" Hermione murmured. "Six hundred mil-... that's ten times the casualties of World War II!" When numbers get to be that high, they seem surreal, unreal. She was just glad that it seemed like Earth - or, at least, Kirk's version of it - hadn't let it become just a hazy part of history, like so many seem to be doing with World War II now that the people who'd fought in it and died in it were becoming fewer and further between.

It was a heavy topic, and she hadn't meant to bring up a heavy topic, though she seemed to do that quite often. So she reached over and slowly wound her arm in his, gingerly resting her head on his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I think I liked it better when we were talking about the stars."

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/waves magic hands around made-up science

made-up science is the only science I'm any good at o/

\o

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